Salt Lake Acting Company - New Play Sounding Series

Salt Lake Acting Company Presents Free Reading of New Play from DEATH OF A DRIVER Playwright

Summer, 1998. Once popular, Arrowhead Community Pool has seen membership decline for years. Retired pool president Dorothy Wilson blames video games and air-conditioning. But when new pool president Freddie Rosedale abolishes Dorothy's longstanding alcohol ban and installs a frozen margarita machine, the place comes back to life, and a battle begins. SWIMMING POOL is a dark ensemble comedy about American excess and restraint on the cusp of the 21st Century. 

Featured in the one-night-only reading are Sean Carter, Barb Gandy, Tamara Johnson-Howell, Dan Larrinaga, Tito Livas*, Morgan Lund*, Kimiko Miyashima*, Nicki Nixon, and Lane Richins*. Robin Wilks-Dunn (I’LL EAT YOU LAST, GOOD PEOPLE) serves as director, Natalie Keezer will read stage directions, and Katelyn Limber* is stage manager.

Founded in 1994, Salt Lake Acting Company’s New Play Sounding Series (NPSS) continues its record-breaking 25^th year with Will Snider’s SWIMMING POOL. The NPSS is the longest-running play reading series in Utah. Past works that have been workshopped in the NPSS to later receive full productions at SLAC (and elsewhere) include SILENT DANCER and HARBUR GATE by Kathleen Cahill, MERCURY by Steve Yockey, STAG’S LEAP by Sharon Olds, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS by Mike Daisey, A SLIGHT DISCOMFORT by Jeff Metcalf, and THE RECEPTIONIST by Adam Bock. Elaine Jarvik’s FOUR WOMEN TALKING ABOUT THE MAN UNDER THE SHEET, featured during last season’s NPSS, will receive its world premiere at SLAC in 2020.

SLAC's 2019 NPSS reading of FOUR WOMEN TALKING ABOUT THE MAN UNDER THE SHEET by Elaine Jarvik

SWIMMING POOL is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made via SLAC’s website or by calling 801.363.7522.

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States

SLAC acknowledges the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of the New Play Sounding Series.

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading: THE ROBERTASSEY

A Comedy by Kathleen Cahill

Monday, April 29 @ 7pm

Director: Penelope Caywood

Actors: Joe Crnich, Olivia Custodio, Alexandra Harbold, Robert Scott Smith

Reader: Valerie Kittel

Stage Manager: Miranda Giles

Roberta Mahoney is 40, unemployed, and taking a trip to Dublin, her father’s birthplace, with his ashes in her suitcase. Her pregnant sister Carol, talked her into it. Roberta hated her father, Hiker, an alcoholic veterinarian who loved animals – especially a pet skunk – more than his family. Roberta arrives in Dublin but her suitcase doesn’t.  Her trip turns into a magical mystery tour and the lost suitcase comes to represent her life of loses –her inability to develop intimate relationships, or to find something to do in life that matters to her – all caused, she believes, by her alcoholic father who keeps appearing, carrying her suitcase and singing his old songs. She meets a woman in a second hand clothing store with a skunk’s tail, a hotel concierge who shows up wearing Roberta’s shoes, and two baggage handlers named Garth and Aemon, who insist they are different people but who look exactly alike; one of them seduces her with his “orphic songs.” Everyone in Dublin seems to be involved in Roberta’s predicament.

THE ROBERTASSEY is a comedy about grief, loss and love; a comical metaphor for the process of learning how to live. As the recorded voice in the lost luggage department says: “Please continue to hold. Don’t give up.  Hold on for as long as you possibly can.“

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

Reserve Tickets Here

Doors open at 6:30pm. Open seating; first come, first served.

Pictured clockwise from top left: Playwright Kathleen Cahill, Olivia Custodio, Robert Scott Smith, Alexandra Harbold, Joe Crnich, and Valerie Kittel

New Play Sounding Series
Free Reading

Monday, May 1 @ 7pm

Director: Robin Wilks-Dunn

Actors: Colleen Baum, Jacob Russell Johnson, Darby Mest, Nicki Nixon, Richard Scott, Matthew Sincell

Stage Manager/Reader: William Richardson

Winter is coming and the squirrels of the great tree are feeling the pinch. The greatest squirrel in the greatest tree in the greatest forest in all the land will not share his nuts. What's worse, rival squirrel families and rival squirrel species are all begging, pleading, and tricking to try to get his nuts. Will the tree survive? Will his family? Will war come and bring the whole thing tumbling down? The answer is yes, but we might have some fun getting there.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

New Play Sounding Series Free Reading

Monday March 6 @ 7pm

Director: Cynthia Fleming

Actors: Austin Archer, Carleton Bluford, Trent Cox, Dan Larrinaga, Samantha Matsukawa, Andy Rindlisbach, Katryna Williams

Stage Manager/Reader: Morag Shepherd

The story of a girl who dances in silent films in 1921 New York City, her family, her lovers and friends, and the famous couple who almost ruined her life.

Workshopped in the 2017 SLAC Playwrights' Lab.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.

New Play Sounding Series Free Reading
Monday, November 21 @ 7pm

Director: Shannon Musgrave
Cast: Anne Louise Brings, Eric Cadora, Dee-Dee Darby Duffin, Jacob Russell Johnson, Melanie Nelson, Topher Rasmussen

It’s company outing day, and Laura, one of the top travel agents of her generation, is having the best / worst day of her life. So much so that she decides to end it all. Afterwards, her colleagues try to piece things together on a memorial blog, but how do you mourn someone you didn’t know that well?

A comedy about depression, or: a treatise on travel agents who don’t travel.

Workshopped in the 2016 SLAC Playwrights' Lab, LAURA AND THE SEA has gone on to be developed in the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, was a finalist for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award, the Princess Grace Award, and was a semi-finalist for the Relentless Award.

SLAC thanks the Jarvis and Constance Doctorow Family Foundation for their generous support of this vital program.